is a board-certified and licensed clinical professional art therapist and Associate Director for the Portland Institute.  Her art therapy private practice, national presentations, trainings and practitioner supervision/ mentoring focus on traumatic loss, specifically with parents who have lost a child, suicide bereavement, and military loss/ Gold Star Families.  The theoretical foundations of her group and individual art therapy work are grounded in meaning reconstruction, attachment informed grief therapy, continuing bonds with the deceased and restorative retelling. She is author of Artful Grief: A Diary of Healing, (www.artfulgrief.com) written twelve years after the suicide of her seventeen-year-old daughter.  She is co-founder of The Kristin Rita Strouse Foundation (www.krsf.com) a non-profit dedicated to supporting programs that increase awareness of mental health through education and the arts.